1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an endoscope apparatus for a three dimensional measurement, a method of operating the endoscope apparatus and a program to be executed to implement the method. More specifically, the present invention relates to an endoscope apparatus that is adapted to display a distance to an object in real time, a method of operating the endoscope apparatus and a program to be executed to implement the method.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-151525, filed May 24, 2005, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
All patents, patent applications, patent publications, scientific articles, and the like, which will hereinafter be cited or identified in the present application, will hereby be incorporated by reference in their entirety in order to describe more fully the state of the art to which the present invention pertains.
In recent years, an endoscope has been widely used. The endoscope can observe organs in a body cavity while inserting a slender insertion portion into the body cavity. A medical instrument can also be inserted through a channel of the endoscope for medical operation. In the industrial fields, an industrial endoscope can be used for observing and checking damages and corrosions to boilers, turbines, engines
As described above, an electronic endoscope has an insertion portion that further has a head portion that further includes an image pickup device such as a charge coupled device CCD. This electronic endoscope will hereinafter be referred to as an endoscope. An observed image is formed on the image pickup device. The observed image is then converted into an image signal by the image processing unit. The image signal is supplied to a monitor to display the image thereon.
Particularly, the industrial endoscope may be configured to be attached to or removed from a variety of optical adaptors for appropriate observations for checking or inspecting objects.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publications, Nos. 2004-33487 and 2004-49638 disclose stereo optical adaptors that have a pair of right and left observation fields in observation optical systems.